


Silhouettes

by wordswithinmoments



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29829744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswithinmoments/pseuds/wordswithinmoments
Summary: Love, like remembering it's the constant that never goes.
Relationships: Eren Jaeger/OC





	Silhouettes

Every time Eren Jaeger tries to tell Jenna that he loves her, something comes along to stop him.

But it’s okay, he supposes, because at the start, love was easy.

Just sixteen years in the world, where curiosity feels like it’s everything. Love at sixteen looked like flushed cheeks, blue skies, and tomorrow. Racing through the fields, laughter in the barracks, and an endless sky that blankets the good and the bad. The devils and the angels; the sinners, and the saints.

Hope was a fickle thing, but it would be years until Eren learned what that exactly meant.

Tomorrow wasn’t an idea that seemed farfetched. Rather, tomorrow was a tangible slice of _something_ that they could always come to.

Love was easy, because that’s all it _could_ be. The worst case scenario looked like Jenna’s no, or perhaps her turning her head, pretending like she didn’t hear him—but that’s it.

Love, projected as, “I think I love you,” through the shy touches he could dare give her, and her “I think I could love you too,” replied in silence in the way she never seems to take it upon herself to shrug off Eren’s touch.

Freedom, to him then, meant venturing past the walls. Perhaps he’d have a house by the sea, and a family to call home. Often, he recounts his dreams of one day waking up to a world where tomorrow would never be a sacrifice, and forever was the constant that would always _be._

Then he’d look at Jenna.

The skies as backdrop, because she always did look best against the shades of the setting sun, and he’d see her in not just his today—but his tomorrow too. So it’s I love you, he thinks. The three words that hold his truth. They come to him, easy, because at sixteen love is easy.

Love is holding the hand of the girl he thinks he’ll fight demons and challenge fate for. The high it brings making him think that for as long as the sky stretches the world, he’ll always hold eternity within his hands. Where it’s Jenna’s hands that are always warm against his palm; the taste of summer in the air a familiar one, because moments like these prove to him that the world can still give him crumbs of kindness.

The bits and pieces of mercy scattered in the little things of life. The broken, suddenly healed, and the unforgiven, remembered to be human again. This slice of peace was Jenna.

Silent I love yous, not yet communicated, because the moment doesn’t feel right—just yet.

When he dreams of the day he’ll tell her, and give her his heart, he sees the absence of the walls beyond, and only a horizon that waits. He’ll hold her hand and lead her to the shores of the sea, and tell her that beyond the waters perhaps the world stretches endlessly.

When silence comes, and the golden hour of the days swirl, love at sixteen is the drive that pushes him to always find a spot beside her, shoulder to shoulder, as they let the stillness of the moment control the flow they try to always have control over.

Because to let down your guards and allow the world to take hold of the flow was what mercy looked like. What the _idea_ of freedom was always, _always_ painted as.

Eren breathes.

The earth is still, but his thoughts are in motion.

At sixteen, saying I love you is through the silence, and reaching across the grass to take Jenna’s hand in his.

The sky is endless, and hope is infinite.

Because when Jenna squeezes his hands back, looks at him right as the sun breaks and the golden hour shrouds them in a spill of warmth, her silent “I love you, too” looks just like home.

(Like home, like innocence, like love—and like victory.)

(It’s love at sixteen that makes Eren Jaeger feel victorious even within the walls.)

-

Then loved changed.

Paradis, into Marley. Family, into just comrades. Knowledge, as _freedom,_ then freedom, as chains.

Like most things, the redefinition of it came unannounced, and gradual. The realization that love was becoming _just_ a blurred fixture in the background was made evident. The thought trickled before it cascaded, like the drips of rain just barely tapping before it pours, turning into a storm. The change wasn’t instant, but the realization was.

Eren looks at himself in the mirror and thinks of Jenna. He thinks of when they were still sixteen, and when love was still easy. Loved looked like bordered sunsets, and her. Walking to the barracks, and bashful smiles, and her. Red tinted cheeks that he always blames on the scarlet of the sky and _her._

Love _was_ the main character and the major plot point of the story, until eventually it wasn’t. Eren realizes that when life was thrown into the mix and decisions were made, love was the first in line to be served as sacrifice. Handed on a silver platter and presented as the main dish, the heroes of the world present love as if it were their greatest sacrifice.

Only that it wasn’t.

Eren turns to look at his hands, bloody. The fabric of his clothes, stained, and the voice in the back of his head at the loudest it’s ever been. Still, he ignores it.

There’s a history on he’s seen and a future only he bears the burden of. And it’s heavy, Eren thinks. Knowing the sins you’ve yet to commit is _heavy._

So he steps back, and tells himself he has to let her go.

He stays in his place, opting to watch Jenna move through the motions of her own thing, watching her fall in love first with herself, then with the idea of freedom. _The idea,_ Eren repeats, because all freedom will ever truly be is just an idea.

Ignorance was the mercy he’s long held in his hands, thinking that it was a form of salvation. He knows that it wasn’t—because what is truth without opening your eyes? It took peering into the memories not of his own to realize that the world truly was cruel. There was a price to be paid, and consequences to be faced. When truth fell into his lap and the burden of this world— _and_ the next fell into his shoulders, Eren gives up himself.

Himself, and love, because he walks forward into a path he knows the faithful to brevity would never follow—and Jenna was one of them.

It’s a good thing, the more he thinks about it.

He remembers her at sixteen, where even in the present he finds comfort in the fact that she didn’t change much. She still wore her glasses, and scrunched her eyes when the wind was too rough on the flight. Like always, she’d bicker with Jean and roll her eyes at his attempts to make her laugh, but would trust him with her _life_ when swords were drawn and the assurance of tomorrows were questioned. She bakes on the weekends and still looks beautiful in all the seasons under the sun.

She was love then. Set on center stage where she became his little slice of the infinity he knows comes with the universe—even though all humanity had was a world with some walls around it.

_(Then.)_

Because now, even if Jenna would _infinitely_ still be love—love became a sacrifice.

A sacrifice he gave to the hands of fate with shaky hands, because at his first sin to morality he’d always thought his hands were far too tainted to hold hers.

Bloody, greedy, hands, because even if the chaos in his mind swirls in the now—flashes of the sins he’s yet to commit, accompanied by the lives he’s still to take flash in his mind. Eren knows that he’ll take, take, and _take,_ because what is a sinner to give but wounds to the world that’s far too broken to be given mercy?

So as he pushes himself to walk down a path not many dare to take, Eren begins to push love away. It’s there, he thinks, but the spotlight’s shifted. He still sees Jenna in every bakery he passes, and is reminded of her at every golden hour of everyday. The couple at the market, and the bashful teenager who offers his lover flowers every other day. Love remained to be defined as innocence within the ignorance of youth for others, while for him, love was pushed into the background.

It becomes the faded blur in the photographs; it’s there, but only if you study the details hard enough.

It’s always there, as were the thoughts of her, but the thoughts of what could have been is quick to fade with just a blink of the eye.

In the present, Eren sees his sins.

His bloody stained hands, and his sins—where all he could really do is take, take, and _take._

In the silence and stillness that the moment brings, he closes his eyes once more and whispers into the world his _I love you._

A message for the love he left back home, along the shores of the forever home he initially thought of. Eren imagines it’s golden hour where she is, and with closed eyes, momentarily feels the semblance of home. He murmurs _I love you_ , after _I love you_ , in hopes that the wind would carry the secrets of his heart, before praying that the weight of his sins wouldn’t burden the message and drown them in the ocean halfway.

Then he opens his hands.

The absence of scars despite the wounds that had been there. The history of a sin that is both his and his ancestors, erased, the skin above it looking more tainted than scarred.

Eren swallows.

One minute he feels human, then the next he’s not. The thoughts race through his head again, chaos turned infinite. Desperate to grasp mercy again, he scrambles to take a hold of the silhouettes of Jenna scattered throughout his memories and finds relief.

A golden sky, a woman who knew her way with kindness and strength bathed in his light beside him, and an _I love you_ delivered through a squeeze of the hand kept as a momentary secret by the silence.

(Where _love_ was innocence.)

Then he opens his eyes.

(He’s reminded that just by a couple of decisions, the very love that was everything became his greatest sacrifice.)

Eren remembers that he’s a sinner again.

-

But despite that, it’s love— _Jenna—_ that becomes forgiveness.

Rather, it doesn’t necessarily _become_ it, because she’s always truly been just that. The fact of the matter that he loves her remains as his sole truth that stays constant even though he’s long changed. His hair’s grown past his shoulders, and he’s changed the routine he used to stick by a couple different times over the years. Eren will look at the mirror and ponder over what to have breakfast for the day, like he did at sixteen, and for that short while he allows himself a moment of relief to bask in the façade of ignorance he _yearns_ to be surrounded in once more.

It’s while he’s undercover in Marley where he the realization that as turbulent as the world projects itself to be, it also is, so, very, _still._

Standing under the sky that swirls. Beneath bursts of marmalade and sprinkles of scarlet, the clouds always just _barely_ rolling above even as his feet are on the ground where he’s running— _breathless._ Under the stars of the sky, where he’s bound by gravity to the earth, where he knows that the planet will spin and spin, and _spin—_ but won’t move.

He could be running a hundred miles an hour, or make it around the earth three times over, but he would never truly move. The planet as a stagnant piece of majesty will remain in its place despite the tragedy. Through the storms that rage, the titans that thunder over the ground, and even through the greed that never seems to escape humanity.

The world stays, because it is a constant.

The planet—who was meant to always be center stage is forced to live in the shadows of human greed, and at that realization, something inside Eren resonates with the tragedy. A heart lays still before it beats, but when it does, it beats loud.

He’s on enemy ground, oceans beyond home—beyond _her,_ but as the momentary _sliver_ of peace comes to him, _like mercy,_ he grasps at its ends and begs for it to overwhelm him.

And they come to him as sunshine. As drops of light during every golden hour of every day, and stay _with_ him—envelop him whole and light his _entire_ being like he’s meant to be center stage—as the memories of Jenna.

Golden hour along summer skies, and despite the stain on his hands and sins on his shoulders, Eren’s sixteen again.

He’s sixteen and watching her race through the grass and jump from the walls—where she’s _soaring—_ because Jenna had always looked best against the skies.

Because every time, Eren’s overwhelmed with the urge to cry. He’s human again, and a child in love again. He’s sixteen again, and _hope_ is the something he can still hold in his hands to save him from the cruelty of the world, _again._

Paradis and Jenna become the clouds that roll slow above him, within the sky that’s infinite and forever there.

—and it strikes him.

A thought that was as sudden to come like the epiphany that’s struck him every time another truth from the world was unraveled, and laid bare. It trickles, like rain, but when it pours, this time the storm is gentle.

It’s a comforting truth that has Eren feeling like he holds hope again. Hope doesn’t look like tomorrow, but it looks like Jenna. And he smiles—the quiet kind, because more than anything, Eren’s hesitant to take the kindness of the world even as it comes to him, gentle like this.

The truth tells him that for something to just be a fixture in the background—even though its blurred, it has to be consistent and steady. The love that became the sacrifice—the factor that was blurred and out of focus, the centerpiece of the photograph changed into something else, was still undeniably _there._

Love was present regardless of what he did to it. It came, and remained. Like the slow roll of the clouds, and the endless, infinite sky that was the constant in his world. It’s ceased to become the main character the photograph focuses on, but it’s in the background and _remains._

So he looks to his hands, then thinks of his sins. Stained hands, tainted soul, and a burden far too heavy to bear for one man alone sat on his shoulders.

There’s a guilt’s intertwined with the salvation that love brings, but he ignores it— _for now._

It’s a mercy, Eren thinks. To be able to think of love in the midst of his sin, but he accepts it. He knows mercy is not for his to take, and salvation is far too clean for the red that stains his hands.

But still, he raises his face to the sky; catching the warmth from the golden light that streams and lets himself be covered in the nostalgia from the years that’s come and past, the traces of the love that he let go before he took them scattered along its glow.

Forever, it is mercy.

(And for now, he lets himself believe that he’s worthy of forgiveness.)

-

It’s Jenna that comes to him and reassures him that he can still be forgiven.

Mercy was the _maybe_ that lingered, because it’s Jenna face to face with him when he’s at rock bottom where he thinks that _perhaps_ he could still be vulnerable underneath the false façade of the armor and power he tangibly has.

She meets him again, in the afterglow of his sin and rage. And she’s glowing, Eren thinks. At sixteen, when love was easy, at nineteen, when love was a sacrifice, and as now—when love is refound as the constant that’s remained from start to now.

Jenna’s eyes are on his; ocean against earth, and the world is whole again as colors bloom and the skies move in motion once more. She sits beside him, ignoring the stains of red on his hands, and holds them. Seated shoulder to shoulder, like at sixteen, but this time the horizon before them is free.

“There’s no more walls,” she says.

“Yeah,” Eren nods, afraid to look at her. He keeps his eyes on his hands, wills them to cease their trembling, and nods his head again. “No more walls,” he echoes.

“Eren,” she calls, and his heart that laid still—beat. It’s loud, he hears. The rhythm thumps in his ears, and it echoes. The heart as the part of him that’s _never_ lied from the start gives him the truth that even though he believes that he’s undeserving—it still _yearns_ for her. To tell Jenna the _I love you_ , as words, as his truth, and not just as a squeeze to the hand or a secret whispered into the breeze oceans away.

Jenna whispers his name again, and it sounds like forgiveness.

He trembles at the smell of sunshine, of summer, and gold— _her—_ and wills himself to not sink into the clutches of nostalgia. Within nostalgia, he is weak. His walls crumble into ash, where the further he sinks, his own mind tricks him that he could _still_ be forgiven.

But it’s bloody, stained, and unmarked hands that greet him, so he pushes the kindness of the world to the side and turns his head, looking away.

“Look at me,” he hears, and because his heart is a traitor to the mind, his body listens and follows.

And when he looks, he sees colors. Gold and amber. Summer and skies. Jenna, as his forever truth, and eternal forgiveness—where even the sinner becomes human again.

“You’re okay,” she says, and Eren’s heart _clenches_ because he truly believes that he is.

“I’m really not,” he mumbles in return.

“You are,” she hums.

Then she holds his hands. Eren flinches at the touch, surprised at the initiative that she takes, but when he raises his head to look at her in the eye, she’s smiling at him. At the raw kindness he sees, as if on instinct, he scrambles to pull his hand back from her grasp, remembering that he’s too stained for her to touch.

Jenna was everything that was merciful, and kind, and even if she was who Eren yearned for—he still settled with the decision to keep her in the light, away from the dark—from him, from sins.

“Jen, you don’t have to hold me.”

She softens, then squeezes his hand. Eren’s heart leaps at the memory of love when it was _still_ easy, and feels the resolve in him begin to chip away. It happens slow, where piece by piece they crumble until he’s finally out in the open enough to face her, bare.

“There’s no scars on your hand,” she comments, voice gentle. Eren only nods his head, regretful of the way he knows that he’s undeserving to wield no scars on his skin despite all the sins he’s done.

“There should be,” he mumbles, because truth be told, he’s always thought to himself that she should atleast carry a tangible piece of memory to remind him that despite the healed wounds—at the core of who he is, of his _power_ , he still has to face the consequences of the thousand yearlong burden he bears.

He’ll always have to bear.

Jenna smiles anyway, her hands cradling his with a kind of gentleness that makes it seem like he’s scarred.

“I think you have scars,” she tells him, her eyes patient. “It’s not up to me to forgive you, Eren, but I’m just reminding you that you’re still human underneath all of this.”

“I see the scars that you don’t think you carry, and you’re more broken than you think.”

“I’m broken,” he echoes, like a broken record. “I’m _broken.”_

“You are,” Jenna confirms, but despite the truth she gives him, it feels like a release.

A revelation of some sort, which strikes him and makes a change upon impact. Jenna speaks to him as just a person and not the world, telling him he’s broken. She holds his hand as the friend who’s seen him from his start up until the now, and tells him that in _her_ eyes, he’s broken.

Eren lets himself feel the warmth as she squeezes his hand again, and tells him, _again,_ as just a person and not the world, that he’s someone who can still be worth saving.

-

She knows that kindness is a foreign concept for Eren, and she doesn’t blame him.

She realizes that he’s always looked at her with the same kind of eyes as from before—before love was redefined over the years—but always hovers over the I love you she knows he’s been meaning to say. A confession, made known, but never delivered.

So she sits beside him again; at golden hour where the sun bathes them in warmth and nostalgia and prompts the question.

“What is love to you?” she asks, a question thrown into the world, but Eren knows it’s for him.

He softens, settling into the tranquility of the moment, and gives into the yearning of his heart.

“Love is this,” he answers, and beside him, Jenna smiles.

“Jaeger’s got _feelings,”_ a laugh behind him chortles.

Eren rolls his eyes, quick to recognize that it’s just Jean’s voice chiming in from the other side of camp. He stays quiet though, but it’s Jenna who’s quick to retort back to him with a laugh of her own, waving him off with one hand and a lighthearted insult that Jean merely chuckles at.

“ _This,”_ she says, looking at Eren and carrying the lightness of the situation comfortably on her shoulders.

“This meaning just you,” he mumbles, turning his face away at the blush that threatens to creep on his cheeks.

Jean chortles again from the background, as did Hanji, but Eren ignores it. Jenna’s yelling at them with a laughter of her own, telling them to go back and mind their business, and it’s like the skies above begins to clear up.

Golden and marmalade, turned into a soft pastel peach that looks like all the shades of forgiveness and the present.

A gentle laugh, and he feels _love_ like he’s sixteen again. It’s _easy—_ and he’s struck with the thought that it still _could_ be easy. The truth is, the world _never_ is, but love, as the “ _always”_ he knows he’ll forever have, _could_ be just that.

So he lets it be.

Jenna’s smiling at him, then at the skies, and he remembers that even if he feels like he’s sixteen again, the present is that he’s older than that and love, in its core definition will always be that emotion that demands to be felt.

Eren feels it.

He’s felt it, is feeling it, and when he looks at Jenna—he knows he’ll forever _be_ feeling it.

He lets it go, and lets it _be._

Right now the world is okay. The skies swirl and the breeze is in motion. He’s grounded, and centered to the earth that will cradle him until kingdom come, and Jenna’s here next to him squeezing his hand despite all the red its been bathed with.

He looks at her, then mumbles an honest I love you, not as a whisper thrown for the breeze to carry or as a squeeze to the hand that uses no words. But he says it as a man, who just loves, and not as the sinner who seeks the judgement and mercy of the world.

Jenna smiles, and Eren’s heart is with the light. He knows she means to say I love you too.


End file.
